Posts Tagged ‘reincarnation’

Okay, first off, I want to warn anyone who has been sexually abused that this is what this post is about. I’ll put all that stuff further down, so you can decide whether or not you want to read it.

This past weekend, I went out with some friends to Freeport, Maine to a little yarn get together we like to call SPA. I totally forget what that is an anacronym for. But there was the obligatory marketplace and I was the obligatory shopper. Lots of indie dyers and spinners! I got me some bunny, and some alpaca, and a sweater’s worth of hand-dyed wool that is yummy!!! I also got a few sock kits and I even won a doorprize! It’s a book, Knitting With Beads, which coincidentally, I’ve been wanting to learn how to do. I’ll post a picture here later. It was good to go out with my ‘home’ friends. I’ve been spending a lot of time either traveling or being visited and I have missed them. It’s too easy to put local people off and expect that they’ll be available any old time. That’s not always true, and they’re the ones who can be there for you in a pinch. So, yeah, it was really, really nice.

Trigger- I don’t know if it’s a fact of age, or the cycles of life, but the things that impact us in a big way don’t tend to stay gone. It’s true of the really great things – dreams we’ve had, adventures we’ve wanted to take, people we have lost touch with and found again. We greet these returns with joy and wonder, ” Why did I ever let that go?”

But the hard things also circle back. And then we’re more like, “I thought I had dealt with this! Why is it coming back now? I thought I had healed.” Some of my friends and I seem to be looking at our hard stuff again. From different angles, different perspectives. Dealing with feelings around child rape, physical and emotional abuse, how it has changed our lives, how we’ve grown because we had to. Trying to sort out anger and shame yet again. And, also, wondering, “Why now?”

I’ve got a theory about that. Each of my friends who is in this place is also in a similar emotional, spiritual place. We’ve made commitments to ourselves and to others that we will be more open, be a little more transparent, share more and really, truly connect. In a word, be more vulnerable. (Okay, so that’s three words – shoot me!) Vulnerability and trust are hard for us. We’re not special or unique, there are plenty of others who have the same issues for the same reasons, but those reasons broke something we consciously work to fix. And we fix what we can. Then we rest and enjoy the blessings that come from learning trust.

After a bit, the joy of that plateau is not enough and we have to cycle through again, because we know what is waiting for us – we’ve glimpsed it, we’ve tasted it. Because of where we came from and the steel that we are made of, we are an exceptional group of solid womyn who know themselves intimately. We know the value of introspection and philosophical thought. We don’t share easily, but when we do, it’s deep and truly meaningful. We are also adventure seekers and risk-takers – because we know what the worst is, and we have conquered it. My best friends have all been through some kind of life changing trauma. We keep perspective and put the trauma away when it no longer serves us to examine it. Just like we trade in our passions when there is something else we want to spend our time on. We do the hard stuff, fun or not-so-much, because we truly want to live.

Knowing my friends, and helping to carry the baggage, it’s a good thing. I like the womon I am, and I know I wouldn’t be this womon if I hadn’t had my own baggage. I think the time is coming that I will forgive my abuser, but now – to thank him? No, that will never happen. Not in this life.

I have a friend who is adopted. She and I have talked about her internal struggle with ‘having to feel grateful’ to her adoptive family for adopting her. The thing is, her childhood was wonderful, she was loved deeply, and her (in her mind) special status was never an issue, never used as a weapon against her, either subtly or overtly. But she did have interests and personality traits that ended up being very, very different from the rest of her family. She’s got some concerns that she’s not girly enough, that being gay has let them down.

I lead with this because she and I have also had a few talks about reincarnation. We both believe that we meet the beings that are important to us over and over again with each successive life. Those beings may be a lover in one life, a best friend in another, an influential teacher in yet another. When I brought up that they could also be our parents, and that we choose, even in infancy, where we will be and who we will be most influenced by, this was a new thought to her. The next logical thought that she then didn’t need to feel gratitude for being “chosen” by them – that she, in fact, had been the chooser was pretty radical.

When I look back at my life and the beings that have been most influential, I find myself with a bit of confusion. If I apply my belief system to the fullest, it means that my abuser is really a being who has been important to me in past lives. Or maybe that being is trying to learn some lesson (that, in my opinion, they have obviously failed at in this life) and I for some reason volunteered to play a part in that. What is my life lesson here? What am I sent to learn? Did we preordain that this would happen? Would someone else have stepped in to provide trauma to my childhood had this not happened? Is this karma or is it about a sentient being trying to learn some important truth?

Okay, I’m totally rambling here. I’m preferring to believe that I am a sentient being, occupying this body to learn some specific lessons, and that the others who are important to me have volunteered to step in and guide me to where I need to be. Hmmmm – that doesn’t sound all that right either – it smacks of forgiving my abuser and realizing he is on some learning path, too. I’m not sure I want to do that.